McCanns made suspects on ‘slightest chance’ of guilt, says report

PORTUGUESE detectives made Madeleine McCann’s parents suspects on the “slightest chance” they could have been involved in her disappearance, a leaked report revealed yesterday.

An official 57-page summary of the huge final dossier assembled by the Policia Judiciaria (PJ) — Portugal’s Criminal Investigation Department or CID — was apparently posted online.

The leak came as Gerry and Kate McCann considered taking legal action against the Portuguese authorities after the couple had their suspect status formally lifted yesterday.

The police report, dated June 20, 2008, and written by an Algarve-based PJ inspector, was placed on the website of the Portuguese newspaper Expresso.

Detectives named the McCanns as “arguidos”, or formal suspects, last September in light of sniffer dog searches and initial DNA test results, according to the document.

This was because inquiries had flagged up the “slightest chance of their involvement with a possible corpse” in their holiday flat and hired car, it said.

The report said a “cadaver dog”, trained to sniff out dead bodies, picked up a scent in the McCanns’ apartment and on clothes belonging to Ms McCann and Madeleine.

The animal also apparently picked up the smell of death on the key of the Renault Scenic car rented by the McCanns 24 days after the little girl went missing.

Preliminary forensic analysis on samples recovered from the McCanns’ hired car raised the possibility of a match with Madeleine’s DNA profile, the report said. But final DNA test results could not match the material to any particular person — or even establish whether it was blood or another type of body fluid.

When the McCanns, both 40, were interviewed on September 6 and 7, they denied having anything to do with their daughter’s disappearance, the document noted.

Madeleine was nearly four when she vanished from her family’s holiday apartment in the Algarve resort of Praia da Luz on May 3 last year as her parents dined with friends nearby.

The leaked PJ report details the numerous leads Portuguese detectives pursued fruitlessly, including psychic visions and thousands of reported sightings of Madeleine from as far away as Indonesia and Singapore.

On one day the child was supposedly seen in places 4,000km apart.

The report also said extensive investigations had found no evidence linking Praia da Luz resident Robert Murat, the first arguido in the case, to Madeleine’s disappearance.

Mr Murat, 34, an Anglo-Portuguese property consultant, also had his suspect status lifted.

The document concludes that, despite the efforts of the detectives, it had not been possible to reach a “concrete and objective” conclusion about the truth of what happened to Madeleine that night.

The McCanns’ family spokesman Clarence Mitchell criticised the apparent leaking of the report.

He said: “As always we simply will not comment on anything that appears to be from the usual anonymous sources.

“If any elements of the police report are being placed online, that would not only be wrong, you have to ask yourself who is behind it and why.

“Gerry and Kate’s lawyers in Portugal will be applying formally for access to the complete file and they will be analysing everything in it in their own time without making elements public at this stage.”

The office of the Portuguese attorney-general, Fernando Jose Pinto Monteiro, announced that Madeleine’s case was being shelved because there was no evidence that the three suspects in the case had committed any crimes.